Typing

I couldn't give a crap how I type on an intenet forum. When I am writing copy and building sites, I am concerned. I get paid for that, I don't get paid for this, thus I also don't pay attention.

But as for the poster who started this thread, it's all fine and dandy to expect everyone to type like you, regardless of their position, but can you outsell the sales reps? Can you out market the marketing manager?

Should they then be complaining that, if you are working in an office with them all, you should be able to close C-Level business and prepare a 30 page tender under strict client guidelines?

It's always the poeple who are good at something that mock others while they are completely incapable of turning the tables.

As for efficiency, if it takes a sales manager 45 minutes to write an email, the boss doesn't care because it only takes him 20 minutes to close a $400,000.00 deal.

When someone is in a data entry, receptionist or administrative assitant position, their speed and accuracy is what separates them from a less efficient employee, THAT'S why it matters to some and not others.

What a stuck up, toffee nosed, and overy arrogant/popmus comment!

IT staff and Administrators thinking they actually make the company money and keep it afloat, whatever next?

I tell everyone my typing speed is 80 mistakes per minute. :D

That way no one ever expects me to do their work! ;)

Col ]:)

by stress junkie Apr 22, 2005

What can you do? People are idiots.

by jessie Apr 22, 2005

That's pretty petty.

by jbaker Apr 22, 2005

I have been using a keyboard since the early 80's. I do not hunt and peck, but I do look at the keyboard. And no, my fingers are not where the teachers say they should be. I can type between 40 and 60 wpm, using my modified hunt and peck. It is stupid that I do not learn how to type "correctly", you say? I have been doing it this way for so long that I do not think that I could learn how to type properly now....

by grbeckmeyer Apr 22, 2005

I did the the hunt and peck thing for a few years on the old C64 before taking typing class in high school, and I think it really gave me an advantage...I think I was doing around 70 wpm with fairly high accuracy.

by tonythetiger Apr 27, 2005

I'd say that if the letters arreared on the screen as you intended, that you typed correctly :)

by jessie Apr 27, 2005

If the letters "arreared" on the screen, does that mean you could be in default for back-letters? What does it mean to have letters in arrears? :D

by j.lupo Apr 22, 2005

Unless the job description has a requirement for WPM (words per minute) there shouldn't be a policy. Certain jobs require that a certain performance level be maintained and to reach it you must type so many WPM. Now, if the job does not have that type of requirement then it shouldn't matter. It's that simple.

I know people that use the one finger method and can type more accurately and faster than I can. I type about 75 words per minute. Of course, my job doesn't require that, but I can do it when I have to.

120WPM, o mistakes with ease, more is she was in a hurry. She was also a principal cellist and legal secretary, I suppose finger dexterity was her benefit.

But in the same sense, she couldn't close a ziplock bag of a deal. She couldn't present her ideas to people, and couldn't generate revenue for the company. But she could help everyone else do their jobs just fine.

So there is a need for people who can type fast and accurately, so they can type letters and quotes for those who can't. But the don't generate revenue and pay for the jobs people have with the company.

Many people would be out of work if all staff had excellent typing skills, think yourself lucky.

by jellimonsta Apr 22, 2005

My younger brother can type 120 wpm with excellent accuracy also (grew up on IM). So did the Ex's beneficial finger dexterity have anything to do with getting together with her in the first place Oz? :)

by bhunsinger Apr 22, 2005

If it matters that much get a voice recognition program and train it. 70 wpm when you think at 10 wpm equals ?

by wordworker Apr 22, 2005

I hear what Oz says about sales people who close big $$$ deals don't need to be great typists. But on the other hand, people who use computers on a regular basis, no matter what their jobs, are only wasting precious time if they have to hunt and peck and then spend additional time correcting their typing errors. Doing the math it seems that good typists probably get more done per productive hour than poor typists.

Typing should be a required class for all school kids, imho. My nephews and nieces were taught "keyboarding" and they can't type worth a crap.

And voice recognition? Viable option at home, maybe, but not in the work place. There's enough chit-chat interrupting work in cube-hell without people trying to train DragonSpeak.

I know a few salespeople who sell heavy earthmoving equipment and they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the office to use a computer but once they learn the basics like how to turn it on they never want to give them up again. All they need to do is be able to surf the net and send the occasion e-mail with attachments of pictures of equipment that they are selling. I watched one guy close 2.5 Million $ deal with one e-mail and a 20 minute phone call. The e-mail took longer to write than the actual sale but it allowed the customer to get into the office so the e-mail was already waiting for them when they got there. It just didn't matter if the e-mail was there 10 minutes earlier as it wasn't an issue and the salesperson couldn't leave until he got the phone call anyway.

Or another guy again selling heavy earthmoving equipment who had sold a new excavator 3 months previously which had broken a 50 cent part that was not available so the customer after 4 weeks of down time came in to give him a major serve as he was loosing money hand over fist on what was a new machine not working. He started to tear into the salesman who listened for a bit and then tore right up the customer for not coming to him first when it broke and couldn't get the part he there and then sold the guy another new piece of equipment that was exactly the same unit for far less than the guy had lost in the 4 weeks that it had not been working and the customer was as happy as a pig in mud.

Now just how many paper pushers could have handled a customer like that without things ending up in a court action costing millions of $ and no one coming out in front? The way that he handled it kept everyone happy with no ill feelings with anything. And the broken unit was left sitting in the sellers yard until the part arrived 4 months latter but the customer left with a excavator on a float within an hour as that was the time taken to get the necessary Police Permits to move such a large piece of equipment around.

Col ]:)

by wordworker Apr 25, 2005

who gives a flying donut about sales people, we're talking about people whose jobs require typing, not people for whom typing is not a bona fide requirement of the job, like sales. Besides, everybody knows the only people who go into sales are the ones who can't handle tech! ;]

by jellimonsta Apr 22, 2005

He should have started his sentence with capitalization :)

And there is such a thing as an ENTER key. This is used at the end of that new thing called a PARAGRAPH.

Used in ancient times to group ideas together, today just used as a decoration and so keyboard manufacturers can claim they have more keys so can charge you more for them.

by jck Apr 26, 2005

my small computer parts from Big Lots:

Scroll PS/2 mouse: $3.99
107 keyboard: $7.99
3-6ft USB2 cables: $6.99

I honestly thought about starting a computer shop, and buying parts at Big Lots, taking the price tags off, marking them up, and making a profit.

So price isn't an issue with keyboards...just the OSes.

by tony hopkinson Apr 22, 2005

The most used key on my machine is backspace, and not because I peck in the wrong place, but because I change my mind about what I want to type.

It's probably too late for a touch typing course now, after 28 years of two fingered typing and besides as a developer the performance bottleneck has never been the keyboard.

Also checking for spelling mistakes, doubled up words, grammatical errors etc, means I don't insult people unintentionally.

I played keyboards for years so my dexterity is excellent, but just as when I played keyboards, my finger placement isn't good at all. I think I probably DO use the same fingers for the same keys, but I type too fast and watch the keys so I miss mistakes easily.

When I type fast I hit the space bar early and 'creat eorphans' or miss 'leters' entirely, often double capitals from not releasing the SHIFT key before I have hit the nest key, thus THis happens alot too.

So I just need to slow down and THINK about handplacement, I know the rows and all that crap but just haven't taken the time to really practice, so while I use all of my digits quite efficiently, I watch the keyboard and don't see mistakes as I type.

I do write copy for some pretty big corporations though, a simple three page PDF can take a week, so I get to catch the mistakes in time.

by tony hopkinson Apr 23, 2005

I do tend to look at the keyboard.
I didn't spend 8 weeeks
typing
ASDF ASDF ASDF
etc.
The only possible reason I can ses for teaching IT people to type, is so they can fall back to being a secretary when they find out that creating an excel worksheet once while at college doesn't make them a software engineer.

It is the paper pushers in the office who think that they are making the money when actually all they are doing is processing a bit of data and producing the occasional invoice.

If you are in a computer related field then a good typing speed and with accuracy does come in-handy but really is not essential. I would hardly expect any of my techs to be expert typists as they repair the machines but I really do expect the person who runs the office to do things correctly as that is what she is there for to clean up the bills that are submitted by the techs and send out invoices that get paid promptly without unnecessary questions about mistakes that are on the bill. ;)

Just try to get a programmer to be able to type correctly it is always an interesting thing to observe. :D

Col ]:)

Many years ago when I worked for IBM on mainframes we had a constant problem in one of the regional towns in a Government Department where the system would crash on an irregular basis. :(

Eventually after everyone else had failed to fix the problem I was sent there and told not to return until I had fixed the problem. ;)

Well just like everyone else I couldn't fault the setup and no matter just how much I tried I couldn't get the thing to fall over and I really did try. :D

But eventually I did find the problem and while it was computer related it was a Data Entry Operator who could type faster than the unit could handle and that would crash it completely. Of course when there was a tech there she never did this but when there was no one there and she wanted a unscheduled break she would just type in a string of data and bring the unit down for about 1 hour while they got it up and running again. :)

I only found this by backtracking the logs and found an error on one terminal constantly appearing just before the crash. Every time there was a crash this particular workstation was involved and when I asked about the operator I was told that she was the best typist in the place and was the fastest and most accurate person possible to find. :)

As it was an un-fixable problem I just let the "Powers That Be" know what was happening and limited the available character entry from that terminal which drove her nuts but the unit never crashed again although we where getting constant complaints about the slow speed of one particular terminal and whenever she was moved the Sys Admins limited the new terminal and allowed her old terminal back to normal operation. :D

It was a quick and dirty work around but the only possible solution to the problem and in this case faster defiantly was not better as it made so much more work for everyone when ever this person wanted a break. :D

Col ]:)

by levannah44 Apr 24, 2005

Col, that sounds awfully like twisted logic -- or something! Taken to its inevitable conclusion, you're saying that computers (keyboards) can't handle a typist's speed as well as old-fashioned typewriters did?

Now, while I know you're talking computers of last century, I'm talking typewriters that go back almost to the turn of the 19th century!

I learnt to type on my Dad's very ancient Royal typewriter (c.1900) by teaching myself from the Pitman's book.

When I started working after completing secondary school and uni, the typewriters I used were greatly upgraded, although still manual. By then I was typing upwards of 70 words a minute.

Then along came electric typewriters, first with "rolling balls" and then with daisy wheels, so my speed increased to 85. By the time PCs came on the scene, the change over was a breeze, as the keyboards still used good old QWERTY. I can type up to 95 words a minute on a good day now, but I mostly don't bother any more now I'm officially "retired".

But on all the typewriters I've ever used, there was never any problem with them not being fast enough to take whatever speeds were thrown at them, particularly the electric variety.

One (ex-court) typist I knew (and they're the fastest, by a long shot -- some up to 120 words a minute) raced along at 112 words a minute, and that was on a COMPUTER keyboard. I don't recall it ever seizing up.

What the hell number of words did this lady type you had the difficulty with when the mainframe used to crash all the time? Just my curiosity again -- and you know what that's like!!!!

Gret

by hal 9000 Apr 24, 2005

It was more a network bandwidth problem than anything else. Those old terminals where little more than a display and keyboard and all the processing was done on the mainframe and by comparison with todays networks they where sooooooooo slow. ;)

But I'm going from memory here I think she was around the 120 WPM speed and the system couldn't handle anything above something like the 100 WPM speed which at the time was way faster than most could type. :)

Anyway she would constantly type in a string of charters and bring the whole thing crashing down and then go off on a break until the Sys Admin got the thing up and running again. Remember these where the Old 9300 IBM's and where sought of the first mass produced and used computers in industry in this particular case it was a Government Department {DSS} so money was no object as the computer improved efficiency. This was after the days of the Golf Ball Electric Typewriter and before the days of the PC. :p

Today we have "Thin Clients" which are almost the same but we have higher band widths available so I very much doubt that a problem would arise, but this particular woman used to delight in bringing the system crashing down just so she could go out and have a coffee or whatever Public Servants do. :D

I still actually know who she is well as of about 10 years ago now but I doubt she has moved from that area as she had a business there along with her husband who had another business and both seemed to be going great guns so if you like I can post her name and town off line to you so you can confirm the story. :p

Col ]:)

http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/layout.html

That would be my finger dexterity not hers.

As for your little brother typing like a girlie, ***!!! LOL MUWAAHAHHAHAHAHAHA ]:)

But I grew up on IM too, I liked Number of The Beast before it went totally commercial but most of the 80's stuff and especially PIECE of MIND & POWERSLAVE was awesome! So maybe he's not really a ***, but guys typing just wasn't cool enough when I went to school. ;)

by ozi eagle Apr 23, 2005

After having become proficient on a standard keyboard you get a laptop, with different spacings, or worse yet one of those curved ergonomic keyboards that type total gibberish.

by wordworker Apr 24, 2005

it's just like working in a kitchen. if you plod along slowly, painstakingly chopping up the onions or the lettuce for every salad or meal because you aren't very good with using the knife and cutting board, you won't get as much food prepared as someone who has good dexterity and can whip through that work quickly and efficiently. Same with typing. It's the mundane tasks that, if done inefficiently, add up to a lot of wasted time over the course of a day.

by levannah44 Apr 24, 2005

I agree with you, wordworker, although "efficiency", I think, is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

My father was a self-taught typist, bashing away on an ancient Royal typewriter from about 1900 which had had all the fraction keys changed to language keys (accents, umlauts, etc., as he mostly wrote in French, German or Italian).

He only ever used two fingers, but I kid you not, his two fingers were quite as fast and equally as efficient as my ten, typing over 60 words a minute before he was smitten with arthritis.

I learnt to type on the same typewriter, but used to follow the old Pitman's book, with all the correct fingers on the correct keys.

Now CD-ROMs with typing programs on them are used (where I come from) to teach typing to PC-users, and while they mostly still use QWERTY, nothing's changed except the speed of the users. It's easier to go faster on a computer keyboard than it ever was on a typewriter, even an electric one!

I guess those who complain about computers are the ones who haven't learnt typing first, although I'll stand by what I said before about my father; some two finger typists can be just as fast and just as efficient as those of us who still use all the proper QWERTY practices.

by tony hopkinson Apr 24, 2005

Of what use it is to be able to type fast and accurately, when you don't know what to type. The bottleneck on a large software project isn't a developer's typing skills !
All speed typing would do is get more characters in a file before you'd realised there was an error in the design.
It's people who realise they've made a mistake quicker that you want, not someone who can type an error rapidly.

by hal 9000 Apr 24, 2005

A salesperson in an office who only surfs the net and sends out the occasional e-mail with a lot of attachments isn't going to be concerned if it takes 5 minutes to write an e-mail or 25 minutes all that is required is to get the attachments to the other end and if they are on dial-up it will take far longer to download the e-mail that it will to actually construct it and send it off.

While they might have a computer on their desks they do not live on the thing but only use it as a tool which is all it actually is and then live on the telephone to either close the deal or find out that the inquiry was a waste of time.

Col ]:)

by levannah44 Apr 24, 2005

I've seen those so-called ergonomic keyboards but never took a really close look at them. Are you saying, ozi Eagle, that they DON'T HAVE QWERTY? This is heresy of the greatest kind.

Gret (in Melbourne)

by Member 25348569 Apr 24, 2005

I had to standardise a whole bunch of laptops and a couple of desktops for an international sales team when they were all gathered together for a conference in Belgium. The laptops drove me blind trying to find some of the keys - I had to cut and paste the backslash key on a couple of systems as I never did find it. One of the desktops had the Dvorak keyboard and I just couldn't handle it and had to get the owner to do it. The "bent" keyboards are just split in the middle - a nuisance but the keys are still in the same place.

The qwerty keyboard was designed to SLOW typists down so the letters wouldn't hit each other. It would seem that the Dvorak keyboard is designed for SPEED as there are no limitations caused by mechanical parts and the keys are positioned in the most logical layout for rapid striking.

Neil :D

ps Enjoy the Games. They're trying to get the 2012 Olympics for London and I'm PRAYING that they fail!

by tony hopkinson Apr 24, 2005

My digits know where to go but the digits aren't where my digits are going.
A colleague has one, been using it for three years, but put him on a normal one and any output looks like it's been thumped out by a three year old having a tantrum.
Give me a bent keyboard and I can do a very good tantrum. Look like ED209 after it fell down the stairs chasing Robocop.

by hal 9000 Apr 24, 2005

And had to switch back to a normal Keyboard that M$ had very kindly given me as a present it is one of the Wireless ones that eats batteries like there is no tomorrow but after breaking or wearing out a mouse in 6 months I got another one which has a better battery life and after 12 months I can almost use it properly now with very few mistakes. But the real problem that I find is that while they are all QWERTY some keys are in different places which totally muck things up no end so now I try to carry a keyboard with me at all times just so I can find the keys that I want without needing to look. Of course that fell to pieces when I got the Notebook as I just can not fit a conventional keyboard/mouse with it for most instances so I'm back to making all the mistakes under the sun because both of the main keyboards that I use are different and they are hard to come to terms with.

Currently I have one of those new beaut Ergonomic Keyboards that look like a giant U I've actually pulled it out of the box and had a look but as yet haven't been game enough to actually plug it in as everything is on the keyboard including the pointing device and you can not actually see the keys as they are at right angles to where you sit. One day when I'm feeling particularly self destructive I'll have a play but personally think it will be a long time coming.

Col ]:)

Col, the only keys that are out-of-place on a standard QWERTY keyboard, be they old manual typewriters or modern (2005) computers, are the auxiliary keys.

That is, all the alphanumeric keys stay the same no matter what. It's the blooming asterisks and back slashes and all the rest of them that seem to get pushed around from pillar to post and walk all over the damned keyboard!

by craig herberg Apr 24, 2005

If it's your employee, send him/her to keyboarding class. If not, you'll just have to grin and bear it. I must admit, however, that some people must think that the keys are not always in the same place as last time!

by robmcinnes Apr 25, 2005

As some of you may be aware the QWERTY keyboard was not designed for speed it was design to slow typists down and to stop keyboards, those things you really did have to hit jamming. So if you want a user to type faster why not recreate the keyboard layout to allow this?

Col, the point I was really trying to make was that the above problem -- typing faster than 100 wpm -- would never have occured on an old manual typewriter, much less on an electric one, golf ball or any other.

And considering computers, even those old IBM mainframes, were supposedly created to be able to take fast input -- always bearing in mind that it was a known fact BEFORE computers that any typist assigned to court duties would always have had a speed of AT LEAST 120 wpm -- why the hell weren't they immediately created to take at least that speed?

Of course, these days, we know everything's lightning fast, and not even an ex-typist, court-trained or otherwise, could out-speed (is that a word??) a computer, no matter how hard he or she tried.

Trouble is, the breed's dying out. These days, even with court "typists" (read also "keyboarders") now actually DICTATE what's said into a machine a bit like a dictaphone, so very little typing, per se, is required.

Same as stenographers; I think they've already died out! Remember stenographers, the one's who used to take down notes of what the boss said using all those funny "shorthand" squiggles? You don't need that any more with computers, and even dictaphone-type machine are on their knees, I believe.

However, knowing how to type on old manual typewriters, where they still exist, is always an advantage when it comes to computers, at least in my opinion, but even so, when only computers are all that's left, including dinosaurs like 486s, etc., there'll still be CD-ROMs (and dare I say, for the dinosaurs, floppies?) around that teach good old QWERTY from the days of manual typewriters. It's just one of those hangovers that's going to stick, I think, even for computers. Logic has made it so!

Gret

But in this particular case the problem was more to do with available bandwidth across the network.

As back in those days all the "Workstations" had no processing power the Mainframes did it all but the data still had to be transfered to them by network cables and this was really where the bottle neck was. If only this woman had been typing I very much doubt that she could have brought the system down but because there where so many other workstations being used concurrently on a Unix Mainframe that was where the problems originated.

Sorry but I can no longer remember the network speeds but by todays comparison even the slowest 10 MBS would have been well beyond the very limited speed of those old units and would have been considered as impossible at the time. But even then if the installation had of been up to spec and as big as it really needed to be I very much doubt that there would have been a problem but Government Departments being what they are tend to make do with the smallest possible and just live with the problems that arise. This was what was happening in this case.

Back in those days we used to have HDD that had to be bolted to the floor with tiger bolts or I think at the time they where called Dyna bolts as the units where not well balanced and it was not an uncommon sight to see one take off across the floor vibrating badly until it reached the end of its leads and unplugged itself when we where testing things. They where in cabinets about 3 - 4 feet high and about 2 foot square and we could stop them unscrew a locking ring and pull out the platters and replace them with another set with different data stored each plater set was several K's worth and the whole thing was horrendously expensive by todays standards. They also used open reel tape that used to travel at several miles per hour and would often break so you ended up with several thousand feet of tape un-spooled in the bottom of the enclosure another long forgotten painful experience rewinding it all back on and splicing it so you could recover whatever it was that was stored on those things.

But just for a diagnostic test we used to walk in with a 10 " + floppy and play what looked like "Space Invaders" from the floppy but really it was a diagnostic program which put a very high load on the system and when it failed you got an error message which told you exactly where the problem was. So initially you would go in and spend the first few minutes appearing to play a game and then when things fell over you knew exactly where to start looking for faults. ;)

For a bit of a reality check watch Apollo 13 and pay particular attention to the actor "Tom Hanks I think" who is showing some dignitaries through the pre launch assembly area and listen to his description of what he hopes to see in a computer in the long distant future he is actually describing something as powerful as a Commodore 64 and today that wouldn't even rate as a play toy but back then it seemed an unachievable goal.

What you have to remember is at the time Intel had not developed the High Density IC which in their first design was a Z 80 CPU which today can be brought for a few cents at Radio Shack if they still stock them but back then they would have been in the several hundred K $ range to get something so powerful.

The real problem in the case that I mentioned was not that the system couldn't handle the typing speed but that it was overloaded to such an extent that it did fail when the higher typing speeds where invoked because there where far too many workstations connected to the mainframe and the bandwidth was very limited so when someone started typing at a very fast rate by DSS standards the network overloaded and fell over with a heap of critical errors. Those where the days with mono screens which where either green on black or orange on black and they where very poor resolution by todays standards they where not even as clear as a TV screen and really a lot worse while today and for a very long time now the Display has been far superior to any TV that has as yet been produced.

These installations where several Million $ each and on every occasion that I was involved in faultfinding a problem on one it always boiled down to not enough processing power and no where enough bandwidth on the network they always needed far more hardware to run every workstation that was made available to the system but just lacked the budget to deploy this extra hardware. The Universities back in those days used to allocate compute time to the students in 15 minute blocks and if you where very lucky you would get 15 minutes at 2.45 AM 2 days a week and if you missed even 1 second it was lost permanently you just never got the chance to reclaim any unused time.

There was an older generation of mainframe computer and I believe that the CSIRO unit designed and built here in AU in the early to mid 40's is currently on display at the Melbourne Powerhouse Museum if I remember correctly it was called Cyrix and did all the calculations for the Snowy Mountain Scheme, the Sydney Harbor Bridge and all the other major construction works in Australia up until it was retired in the early to mid 60's.

I didn't go see it while I was there as I would want to play with it and it is only a static display as the people who where responsible for keeping it running are now long retired and even to just set it up they had to pull a guy out of retirement just to tell them how it should actually look when assembled I don't think that they have applied any power since it was assembled in Melbourne and from my understanding are unwilling to risk it as it might break and they have no idea on how to repair it if that was to happen. Of course the whole thing is feed by punch cards and the resulting output is all punch cards again which then need to be feed through another device to get the correct answers to the computations that where performed. The thing ran at 1 KHZ and in its day was considered as the fastest thing possible. Now days we are expecting speeds in excess of 3 GIG Hertz a little over 3 million times faster and with a readable input and output as well. :)

I know exactly what you are getting at but the real situation of the time was that s much as possible was done with as little as possible and that was what caused many of the problems and this was all done this way because of the prices involved in just keeping the things running let alone buying everything that was required in the first place.

Even in Canberra other than the Department of Defense no one had a big enough system to take full advantage of the capabilities that where offered and this was all because of the high price of the original installation which often took several months just to get the hardware into the building and then it had to be in a temperature controlled room that was kept at 0 humidity and only allowed to change temperature by a few degrees C . The building that these things where housed in couldn't have any water at all near them and if there was a fire there was a Halon fire suppression system which is no longer allowed but if it was deployed it prevented any damage occurring to the mainframes and all of the cables that ran in trenches along the floor. It really was a major undertaking to install one of these units and much of the time the size of the area that could be set aside was the limiting factor as each frame had to be a certain distance from the nearest frame to stop a buildup of heat. :p

Anyway have a look in the Powerhouse Museum and you'll see the original AU computer that worked for well over 20 years and other than routine maintenance never gave any real problems. Of course with all the tubes in the thing you could quite easily place a fry pan above it and fry up a meal if it didn't do so much damage to the machine. E#very connector on that unit is GOLD not plated but pure Gold even the wires that plug in are all Gold as well or at least they used to be I'm not sure just how much of it was sold off to recover costs when it was mothballed but the cables alone would have kept the AU jewelers in gold for a few years. :D

Col ]:)

by jessie Apr 25, 2005

The QWERTY keyboard layout was developed to slow people down on manual typewriters so they wouldn't bog up the keys when typing. When I was learning to type on a manual typewriter, I could EASILY get the keybars stuck together just by hitting two keys in close succession. I've gotten WAY too much ink on my fingers from prying apart the keybars on manual typewriters before the electric typewriter was developed which would only allow a certain typing speed (not sure what it was).

by jessie Apr 25, 2005

I should have read the lower threads before posting this one... just ignore it. :)

That's very true, Tony, and I quite agree with you. I'd say the majority of projects requiring input on a computer these days don't need speed, or even accuracy (meaning that caused by speed), but while the computer keyboard is still aligned to the old manual typewriter QWERTY keyboard (which was established for very logical reasons, although to a non-typist it probably looks entirely ILlogical), I believe that knowing this arrangement, and therefore knowing how to type correctly, is still extremely important.

You can deny it if you like, and you are more than welcome to try, but until a "new" keyboard arrangement is developed (non-QWERTY), or the keyboard is discarded altogether in favour of voice control, I believe typing is a very necessary skill.

by anykey??? Apr 25, 2005

I am a big fan of mundane trivia, and read some info on the history of the typewriter.
The QWERTY keyboard was created to slow typists down on one of the early typwriter designs because the orginal layout was to efficient and caused the typewriter to jam, and this occured with average or below average typists of the time, there are actually way more efficient keyboard layouts but they just never caught on.

I do believe that it is imporntant to be efficient on the keyboard, but in MOST cases accuracy can make up for someones below average speed.

by absolutely Apr 26, 2005

And I also believe it's a little bit misleading. As I remember, the QWERTY keyboard solved the problem of jamming by separating the keys of letters that frequently occur in words side by side. Typists were slowed down as an unavoidable side effect of having the keys moved after they had learned one layout. In any case, avoiding typewriter jam actually made them faster, because after all the standard is not how quickly one taps a key, but how quickly one gets the correct letters, numbers, and puctuation in the correct sequence, using the available tools.

by tony hopkinson Apr 25, 2005

and valuable for programmers such as myself. But if you are going to teach it, it's got to be right at the start. After nearly thirty years on qwerty I'm ruined for standard touch typing, it would be like trying to do feet writing. I suppose given a non qwerty (dvorak for instance)it would be as 'easy' to learn touch type with it as the three fingers and a thumb method I use now. I don't think key speed would be the benefit, but removing the dleays from chnagign some of my standrda spelling mistakes, when pressing the compile button. Saying that I'm so regular with most of them I can do a search & replace.
Had a go a voice control for coding, the punctuation requirements, coupled with the difficulty of editing by voice made it a non-starter. Haven't seen one recently, but without intelligent recognition of the syntax of the language you are coding in, it's slower than I can type with one finger.

by wordworker Apr 26, 2005

That's sound reasoning. I hope the people in your payroll department don't pick up on it.

by tony hopkinson Apr 26, 2005

I'm a developer. Typing fast is not important, spelling the words correctly first time is not important. Writing robust, maintainable fit for purpose applications is important though, much much much more important. If you match me against someone who can outperform me on the design front and can type you have a point. But if you'd rather have good typist who knows a bit about developing doing your software, then I forsee a short and unproductive career ahead of you unless you move into HR. In which case it will be long and unproductive.

Being able to type is not a measure of ability in any job in IT.

Phew! Who invented this Dvorak keyboard, Neil? I just checked it out, and of course, having the old QWERTY keyboard superimposed on it allows the differences to stand out very distinctly.

Trouble is, for those of us who learned to type on the old QWERTY system, I'm not sure how easy it would be to UNlearn it and re-learn the Dvorak layout. I think I'd forever be getting my fingers knotted!

Yes, I was aware that the QWERTY layout was invented with the idea in mind of slowing fast typists down. I was never really certain what that meant, however, because all court-trained typists needed to have at least 120 wpm, or two strokes a second, even back in the "olden days"!

On those old manual battleaxes, that was fast, and even on electric typewriters, golf-ball and anything else, it was also considered pretty rapid too.

I guess I'd have to be able to use the Dvorak layout properly before knowing if it aided speed or not, but, as I said, I can't see me unlearning QWERTY at my age and taking on such a challenge. Usually I enjoy challenges, but I think this time I'll just stick around with 70+ wpm and be content with that!

That the Dvorak was developed long before the QWERTY right at the beginning of the typewriter era but with those old machines caused too many jam's where different keys would clash and lock together requiring the operator to stop typing and unjam the machine.

To minimize this from happening someone developed the QWERTY layout which slowed the typists down considerably and it was eventually accepted as a "Standard" keyboard layout.

Prior to this happing the things like court proceedings where taken down in short hand and then latter transcribed to paper via typewriter but that was all in the late 19 TH century and by the time that the typewriters had become reliable or at least didn't jam as often the QWERTY was the accepted layout so there where no changes as by that time every typists had become familiar with the layout.

From my understanding the QWERTY layout was only required for about 20 years or so for reliability issues with the really old typewriters but by the time that the units could be pushed faster the layout had stuck which just might go some way to explaining the amount of RSI suffered by typist's on those old typewriters and to a lesser extent on the newer electric ones and then computers.

I really don't know if that is correct I was however told that story many years ago now and it does make a certain amount of sense.

As you quite rightly say once you have learned the QWERTY system it would be very hard to switch to a different layout which I've been told is the main reason why the QWERTY has stuck for so long even though it so inefficient.

Col ]:)

In sales it is a must and if you read the original posting that this is all about the person wants everyone who uses a computer to be an expert typist. This is just plain unnecessary.

Being the great tech that you are would you like to deal with a hot under the collar earthmover who has lost a small fortune and is unable to pay his bills because of a cheap broken part that the techs can not get to replace? :)

Just how would you deal with a situation like this without ending up in court for not providing a service to the customer? How would you prevent some form of Legal Action being brought against the company you work for because something new has broken and is not currently repairable? More to the point just how would you attempt to explain this to the user who is relying on that piece of equipment to make a living?

The position is simply that those in any office environment who push paper around very rarely contribute directly to the companies income they are there as a second string to relieve the workload from the sales staff who are the ones who make the real money. :)

You can think as much as you like that salespeople are failed techs but the reality is without them none of us would have a job to go to and would be unable to pay our bills. If you would be happy sitting at home on Welfare you are welcome to it but I personally prefer to actually work for my money and I do realize just how important any salesperson is to any organization no matter who they are.

You may not give a flying donut about sales people but they are the ones who keep you in a job and you had better remember that or you'll very shortly find yourself unemployed as we in IT are only there to lessen the workload for the sales people without them bringing the money to pay for our play toys there would be absolutely no need for our services or the equipment that we maintain.

Answer me this other than Government can you name just one company that doesn't rely on sales to keep running?

Col ]:)

by wordworker Apr 25, 2005

Dude ratchet back the caffeine intake. I'm kidding about sales people. Let's stipulate: Outside of sales, in any job that requires typing on a computer, good typists are more valuable, more efficient typists than bad typists. That's what I'm saying.

But by the same token I'm unwilling to agree that everyone who uses a keyboard should be required to be a high speed typist.

Different sections of any organization need different skills and that is where I disagree with the original poster who seems to think that everyone who needs to use a computer should be given typing lessons and constantly be required to meet certain levels of ability.

Sorry but I didn't notice that I left out all the smiley faces as a form of "Sarcasm Alert." :D

I think I posted it somewhere else in this thread but I did suggest somewhere that you watch a bunch of programmers try to write a letter or do any general office work it is amusing to say the least. :)

Col ]:)

by j.lupo Apr 25, 2005

As many have noted, typing is not an issue or have any influence on effieciency or effectiveness for all job roles/functions. Programming is only one example of people who do not have to be great typists because there is more involved then typing the program into the computer. The other tasks are more important then the typing.

Good typists are needed for very specific types of jobs where writing is the focus of the job - Administrative assistance, secretaries, writers, etc. I can't see a mechanic needing to type up his forms on the data entry screens very quickly. It is fill in the blank for him/her.

The job requirements determine the skill sets needed. :) just my opinion

by laughing jack Apr 28, 2005

Nobody's selling Undertaking.

And they are the ones most commonly used when punching code so different makes or models of keyboard can have a major impact on typing speed and accuracy. Unfortunately when you are punching in code you do not have the luxury of a spell check or grammar check you have to go back and manually edit any thing that the compiler can not correct and at the moment there is a massive difference in what a piece of code will do with a back slash instead of a forward slash. That can be just one typing error that causes the piece of code not to work add that to 100,000 lines of code compiled by up to 30 programmers and just begin to imagine what can happen. :D

Col ]:)

by jessie Apr 25, 2005

People go into sales because a good salesman can make money HAND OVER FIST!!! People go into TECH because they can't handle sales.

Great, I can type 80 wpm... that means that as a tech, I often get handed secretarial jobs for the other techs because the rest of them can't type very fast with a good bit of accuracy... woohoo, typing has made my life soooooo much better.

by wordworker Apr 25, 2005

That's fair but not great typing speed. So you're saying it isn't to your benefit you can fill out tickets faster so you can get on to more calls, or on to other activities to improve your knowledge base or skill set? Pee-shaw! If you're accepting the secretarial jobs, that's your fault for being a wimp. You should be flaunting your superior skills, not mocking them.

by roger99a Apr 25, 2005

I didn't like it, either, so I became a tech. I can't type worth a nickle either, but I can memorize a 128 bit WEP key, a Windows OEM number, tons of IP addresses, and I can solve problems in a fraction of the time it takes most other techs I know.
I got an A in keyboarding because I was the only person in the class that could get those old crappy 8088's to print.
Some skills can save you minutes. Some skills can save you hours.

by jdclyde Apr 25, 2005

They don't have the time to learn how to save time.

It is the same excuse for not upgrading to new versions or using anything but M$ OFFICE and Windows. They (kind of) know this and don't have the fortitude to learn anything more than they apsolutly have to.

For some it is ability, for most it is just pure laziness. And this is at all levels of the business food chain so who is going to mandate that the CEO or President HAS to learn how to type?

by jck Apr 25, 2005

also has to do with achieving "goals"...which means...if your IT director slates projects for the manager to delegate to his employees, then you have no time to send all your people about migrating to other software and OSes without risking schedule on what "the man" wants done.

Plus, migration often does mean learning new stuff. And when corporate heads see the cost of sending the critical staff to training that have to learn it on the quick...they take a step back and then give us the "that isn't cost effective", even tho in a 5 year timeframe migrating to a Linux would probably save billions for large corporations.

That's the problem tho with everything in business...business is about being "short-sighted"...only seeing upcoming goals...and profits.

If you can't make sure that goal is met and that exec can't get his wife that new Jag for her birthday like he promised...you're not gonna get things the way you want.

As for CEOs and stuff learning new things...all they really need to learn is email and how to watch porn on their pc. hahahaha

of course, ya do have to motivate folks to learn new stuff...I mean...who wants to learn things over again?

by j.lupo Apr 26, 2005

Jck - I agree with you about learning new things to a point. I find that in technology, techies like to learn new things and will jump on it PROVIDED they actually get to use it. That has been an issue for me, if I have to learn something then I should be using those skills in my job (especially if the job requires that I learn it). What I find though is that upper management wants these new skills, but then doesn't implement them.

So, if I don't get to use it what is the point in trying to learn it. I like to learn, but I learn best by doing. Giving myself projects at home doesn't (for me at least) have the same rewards as doing it for a customer.

by tony hopkinson Apr 25, 2005

My typing isn't that brilliant, my handwriting makes it look immeasurably better though. A teacher once described it as the path of drunken spider with seven mis-set legs and an overlong crutch.

My writing is so bad that I can not even read it myself just after I've written it so I resorted to typing everything.

But about a year ago I had to use a typewriter for something and I described that as "Cruel and Inhumane Punishment!" Thank God for computers they just make life so much easier and I don't have to worry about spelling mistakes any more. ;)

Back when I was at school or Uni I used to have to do a lot of technical drawings which required everything to be printed so now on the rare occasion when I do write something down it is all printed as I haven't managed to grasp the fundamentals of running writing that is readable after wards. :D

Col ]:)

by absolutely Apr 26, 2005

Personally, I think the convenience of being able to type makes it hard to understand why people would not learn it, especially when I consider how irritating it was to hunt and peck.

However, to be irritated at somebody else's inability is terribly petty--unless that inability leads them to take something that belongs to you, as in Welfare or tax breaks for churches.

"Besides not being productive" - you mean that without this skill anybody who uses a computer does so less productively than they might if they learned how to type, not that they are not productive at all.

"should be a requirement" - or we could make non-typists wear little yellow stars, and send them off to special camps for a little while, where they can concentrate on developing this supremely important skill for the sake of the Public.

"i also don't understand why someone using a computer wouldn't want to learn how to type." Agreed. And when I own a company where this is an issue, I can include typing as a job requirement.

by wordworker Apr 26, 2005

...are going to kick your butt in a head to head measure of who produces the most code in the least time, assuming quality of coding (number of defects) is equal.

overy. hahahahahA!

I know what you meant, but that is so much funnier!

I have tears in my eyes after that. Truely a highlight!

by dwiebles Apr 26, 2005

10 minutes to type this response...

is it's own reward sometimes.

I will learn things I find interesting, regardless of if I will actually use that knowledge at work or not.

Then there is always the cross-over knowledge. Knowing how something is done over here helps you figure out a way to do something over there.

Everyone has their own level of motivation and rewards, and who is to say who is right and who is wrong?

I need to go LEARN how to play solitare now.

by j.lupo Apr 26, 2005

I wasn't saying I don't like to learn for the sake of learning, I was talking specifically about extra required learning at work that never gets used and probably wasn't in my interest area. So, the motivation is lower.

I like to learn by doing in general. So, anything I want to learn, I make sure I am going to use it in some way - volunteerism, job, family, friends, etc.

not directed at you specifically.

Different people learn differnt things in different ways for different reasons.

Not saying anything is wrong with it.

I have a running thing with my boys (age 13 now) at the end of the day "I learned more than you did today", and then we talk about what we learned to see who actually did learn more that day. Helps to keep them motivated and curious. Not to mention it is hard to walk around being a Know-it-all if I don't know it all! lol!

Cheers.

by jck Apr 26, 2005

I don't get a big rush out of doing IT stuff for people anymore. That went out with my burnout in 1999 after being worked for months on 80 hour weeks, not seeing the sun come up, etc.

I get little rushes when I find chinks in Microsoft's .NET architecture tho. I mean. If I can find them within 6 months by myself, then I would dare to say MS doesn't check too hard for them.

And yes, management often will want things but let them fall short of being done...usually because of fiscal concerns.

That's one of the reasons why I like working for a government department now. Because if I know I need something and it's necessary to do my job, I know my boss will go to bat for me and get it through finance.

You're responsible in government (save elected representatives) to do the work right the first time, no matter if it runs over 10% or not...the people can't be handed a piece of crap.

Corporate enterprise is only truly responsible to give the public a product they will buy...and deliver the maximum dividend to the share holder as they can to keep their money invested. Quality often gets shorted.

So...in the end...getting new processes don't get implemented because it's seen as "unnecessary" when it comes down to the bottom line. Bosses will tell you otherwise, but you can be guaranteed that if a project is nixed that some number has put their bonus in jeopardy in almost every case.

That includes doing things to improve the company.

I admit that I am a lot tighter about this myself. Only takes getting burned a few times to step back from the fire.

My biggest peave is when people ask your opinion when getting a new computer. They have seen the new SMELL computer at the local appliance store and just want you to stoke off their ego, not to give a real opinion.

The other thing is, I almost NEVER make house calls anymore. They drop the system off at my house with the full understanding it may take a few days for me to get to it. If it is at my house setup, I can use that free 3 minutes while I am waiting for my microwave popcorn to pop, or while the next lvl for BVN loads to look at what they are whining about.

Bad thing is, no one has their disks anymore so I have to determine what they need and start it downloading before going to bed (can't take my bandwidth and get fragged because if it!~) so it is usually a few days on that and most of the crap people pick up these daze require a format anyways.

I need to find a cutie that needs me to fix their computer, then I will do a house call!

Just back away for a while. Tech is to fun to let it get turned into just another day in the orafice.

Set you back $100 for a mouse and keyboard.

Then they put all the fancy shortcut keys for people that can't click on an icon on their desktop. That whole mouse thinge is just too complecated.

NOTE: I was being as sarcastic as possible about the Enter key and why it was put on the keyboard as our discussion poster there while complaining about people not knowing how to type, was unable to type.

Guess if you have to explain a joke it wasn't very good. Shoot. And I thought I did good on that one! Ah well, they can't all be gems.

by jessie Apr 26, 2005

*I* understood you, even if no one else did... I guess we're just too high-brow for them!

Here we have a post started by someone how has been a member since 1999, has posted on entry in one thread and started this one post.

"He/she" never came back after the original post to engage in a discussion, so why start a discussion?

My question is, do you think that there are sleeper accounts that get randomly used to start conversation that would get people going?

May have to start a discussion asking just that.

by jck Apr 26, 2005

er...maybe...kinda like there were viruses who a lot of people thought were perpetuated by the anti-virus companies in the late 1980s?

Or, like the aliens who live among us and report back to the mothership that hides behind the moon?

Or how about the fear I have of gremlins hiding in my shoes!!!!!!

haha...sorry...it's raining outside and I'm bored...it's possible...I wouldn't doubt it...it's a way to keep things moving and guide things

by jdclyde Apr 27, 2005

that there aren't any aliens behind the moon? How do you know, have you ever looked there?

by hal 9000 Apr 26, 2005

The Evolution Lie and Why am I Voting for GWB have scoured the data base and started picking up unused accounts and started new discussions just to get more input so they can evolve further. :)

Today TR tomorrow the World. ;)

Next week Skynet destroys the entire place because we are driving it mad! :D

Col ]:)

by jasonce Apr 28, 2005

Some of us just enjoy spending time reading threads like these.... but don't always find we have to have something to say..

Anyway whats wrong with this topic. Its a valid question - what level of typing skills should people have if they are going to be in IT? I think it depends how much of their job is typing.
If they are a techo they have to understand the technology and how to fix it and how to get the job done.
If they are a receptionist who types long reports then yes they should have good typing skills.

As long as you have reasonable keyboard awareness eg. two finger typing then it doesn't really matter as most IT tasks only call for a few commands here and there much of the stuff we do these days is point and click anyway.

I have been in IT 15 years and spend most of my time 2 finger typing because I find it easier. And yes I have been on both sides of the fence... I did touch typing with all 10 fingers when I was at school but I find when programming or belting out commands that the symbols and numbers slow me down to the point where touch typing is slower.

When writing a 500 word report however I find that touch typing helps speed things up but I wouldn't say its part of my every day job to write reports. I don't think touch typing is really a necessary job requirement unless your doing lots of data entry eg. Maybe on a helpdesk where you are constantly writing up support ticket reports.